No. 1 Auburn vs. No. 2 Alabama is big for college basketball, but huge for rabid Tiger and Crimson Tide fans

All eyes being on the state of Alabama is a familiar occurrence on Saturdays in the fall. 

But the state has never experienced anything close to what will take place this Saturday afternoon inside Coleman Coliseum in Tuscaloosa. No. 1 Auburn vs. No. 2 Alabama is the ultimate Iron Bowl of Basketball (IBOB) matchup possible. 

The historic game is a result of a long buildup in basketball hypercharged by two of the game’s best coaches and an emphasis on creating more marquee weekend games. It is the biggest basketball game in not only state of Alabama history, but possibly in the history of the Southeastern Conference. 

For as much hype as there is around the actual game, it’s also amplifying what those in the state of Alabama have been aware of for a while: The passion of Alabama and Auburn basketball fans may even exceed those of football fans, especially online. 

“Football you get a lot of casual fans and I’ll watch it on Saturdays but for basketball, you really have to watch it all week,” said Brandie McLain, a huge Auburn sports fan who owns a popular fan account on X. “There’s two games almost every week and sometimes more during nonconference schedule. I think having to keep up with it more makes people more engaged in the sport.” 

Shortly after Garth Glissman left the NBA to become the SEC’s associate commissioner for men’s basketball in July 2023, he went on a listening tour. SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, his new boss, had an early challenge for him: How can the SEC make its big events bigger?

He traversed the SEC’s footprint to meet with coaches, administrators and even fans to better understand what they wanted to see to make SEC basketball feel bigger. What he discovered was the league needed to prioritize putting bigger games on Saturdays, a day football fans were well accustomed to investing significant time, energy and money into supporting their favorite teams.

“To me, the SEC’s traditional excellence in football and the passion and pageantry of our fans can become a tailwind for basketball,” Glissman told CBS Sports. “Instead of viewing it as competition or in the basketball context feeling like a second-class citizen, let’s lean into it and try to capture all of the excitement and passion of our fans that dominates SEC Saturdays in the fall and do everything we possibly can to carry that passion over into the winter months through basketball season.”

That philosophy – plus a historically great year for the conference as a whole – has led to Saturdays that feel as big and important as what fans are accustomed to seeing in the fall. Last Saturday was one of the most stacked days in recent memory for the SEC, featuring No. 1 Auburn vs. No. 6 Florida and No. 10 Texas A&M vs. No. 15 Missouri. This week not only do basketball fans get the incredible No. 1 vs No. 2 Iron Bowl of Basketball but they also get a ranked Egg Bowl of Basketball between No. 22 Mississippi State vs. No. 19 Ole Miss. 

Glissman believed basketball didn’t have to compete with football even if their schedules overlapped the first couple months of the basketball season. And that if the league could create enough compelling games on Saturdays, it could lead to long-term growth for the sport. 

“I want to give people across the Southeastern Conference joy and memorable experiences that they’re remembering years from now because they got to see their favorite team win a big game or they got to spend a special day with their son, their dad, their grandpa or their wife, whatever the case might be,” Glissman said. “We want to honor our fans knowing that the SEC is central to much of the existence in this part of the country and we want to give them big-time matchups on Saturdays so they can make a day of it and create memories.” 

That much is a guarantee from Saturday’s Auburn-Alabama game. Another guarantee? The winning fanbase will mercilessly remind the other about it. 

A key to understanding this rivalry and what Saturday’s game means to both fanbases is to remember they’ve waited a long time for this. They had to live through the Anthony Grant and Tony Barbee eras in Tuscaloosa and Auburn, respectively. 

Before Bruce Pearl arrived at Auburn in 2014, the Tigers had last made the NCAA Tournament in 2003. McLain, a 2018 Auburn graduate, remembers frequently being offered free tickets when she and her dad, also an Auburn alumnus, would go to games in the pre-Pearl era. In those early days, Pearl would do whatever he could to stoke fan interest — even going into classrooms and fraternities and sororities to implore students to buy in. 

Alabama had more of a basketball history than Auburn but neither program had made a Final Four before Pearl took Auburn there in 2019 and Alabama coach Nate Oats guided the Crimson Tide in 2024. 

In the state of Alabama where people like Paul Finebaum made a name for themselves talking about football 365 days a year, the hardcore basketball fans were like second-class citizens the way Glissman described. As the football programs won national championships and Nick Saban built college football’s greatest dynasty, the basketball programs mostly struggled to lift off and sustain any momentum. There was even some bitterness within the fanbases with Alabama’s most passionate basketball fans deeming those who didn’t properly support the program as FOGs: Football-only Gumps. 

As the basketball programs finally started seeing success, that feeling of being the forgotten stepchild never fully went away. It manifests itself online in hilarious and, at times, aggressive defensive of their programs. CBS Sports’ Matt Norlander touched on it earlier this week, saying, in part, the two fanbases are “extremely online and absolutely out of their minds, hunting for even the smallest slights to slay their enemies, constantly trying to one-up the other.”

Michael Casagande, the statewide sports columnist for AL.com, the largest news organization in Alabama, has been on the receiving end of what Norlander described. If basketball fans don’t like something he’s tweeted or feel he hasn’t adequately appreciated the team, they’ve been quick to let him know. 

“There’s a lot of defensiveness over their team,” Casagrande said. “They’re very defensive of any slight, real or perceived. They are very ready to attack and that’s their right, they can do that how they choose. But it doesn’t always make for the best dialogue. It’s more of attack first than let’s have a conversation.”

Still, Casagrande, a Louisville native and long-time college basketball fan, is excited to see the passion for basketball flourishing within the state. He’s spent 16 years covering sports in the state of Alabama and in that time covered 10 national championships. When you’ve covered so many SEC and national football championships, at a certain point, he admitted it can dilute every other football game for you. It’s why he’s over the moon about Saturday’s game because for the man who has covered it all in college football, he’s never experienced this before.

“The Final Four I was like a kid in a candy shop, it was the most exciting thing I’ve been to,” Casagrande said. “This is up there with it because it’s on campus. I’m about as excited to cover this game as I have been for anything in a while.”

Less excited about this game? The social media coordinator of the losing team’s X account. In a trend that kicked off after Auburn’s 2019 Final Four run, Auburn fans would pummel an opposing team’s then-Twitter account with hundreds of meme replies second after a loss. The hilarious trend has since spread throughout the SEC and college basketball. 

“It’s so funny to see now when almost any team posts a final score tweet the replies almost assuredly have memes from opposing fans,” said popular X user Pablo Escobarner, who helped start the trend amongst Auburn fans. “Doesn’t even matter the team, invested in the result or not, I almost always read through the replies now. It’s great. While none of us would ever actually take credit for the trend itself, it’s cool to know that you were a part of the boom and what it has become years later.”

The stakes have been raised between the two fanbases while the opportunities to hate watch the rival expecting a loss have greatly diminished. A story decades in the making has led to this unbelievable moment. Two heavyweight opponents featuring incredible players like Auburn’s Johni Broome and Alabama’s Mark Sears, terrific coaches in Pearl and Oats that the opposing fanbase loves to hate and dynamic gameday environments that rival the best of what college basketball has to offer.

The SEC’s best basketball season ever runs through the state of Alabama, and the wildly passionate and previously neglected basketball fans couldn’t be more thrilled about it. 

“It’s not hyperbole to say that Auburn vs. Alabama has surpassed Duke vs. North Carolina at the moment in terms of magnitude,” the X user Pablo Escobarner said. “The eyeballs watching, the casual paying attention, the fanbase of the media clearly isn’t the same, but pound-for-pound it’s collectively better basketball and has been for a few years. 

“I hope Alabama loses every time they take the floor — I’m sure that sentiment is shared on the other side of the aisle — but for both fanbases to be in this moment, watching these specific teams and seeing what lies ahead, it’s special.”